


but evil things, in robes of sorrow

by trell (qunlat)



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen, Shadowlands, Sinfall, Venthyr Campaign
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28841064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: “You will not put her in harm’s way again.” The Accuser pushes back off the table, straightening to her full height. “Not on my watch.”On the rebellion’s first night in Sinfall, the Accuser goes to see the prince.
Relationships: Prince Renathal & The Accuser, The Accuser/The Curator (Venthyr)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	but evil things, in robes of sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> For [azie](https://nanakomahina.tumblr.com/), for their enabling sins.

“I’m _fine_ ,” the Curator says, for the twentieth time that night, as the Accuser gives her a final embrace at the door to her chambers. “Really, Harriet, I’ll be all right, all I need is a rest. I’m far more worried about Renathal.”

Indeed, the prince’s wounds had been severe, but the Accuser says, “He’ll be fine,” not because she knows any such thing but because it’s not _Renathal_ who’s had her heart in her throat since their spectacular return from the Maw. (Has it really been less than a day? It feels like she’s been on her feet for a week.) “Is there anything else I can do?” she frets, knowing she’s repeating herself and unable to stop. “Anything you need—?”

“No, just to sleep. As you should, too, once you’ve got your Avowed sorted out.” The Curator stifles a yawn. “Good night, my dear. We’ll see each other soon.”

“Soon,” promises the Accuser, with a parting kiss on the Curator’s cheek. It makes the Curator smile, the last of her that the Accuser sees before the door closes.

For a moment after she merely stands there, alone in the dimly-lit hall. This wing of Sinfall has barely been breached, and the lit torches are few and far between, leaving her in a flickering semi-dark.

The trouble, of course, is that the Curator _isn’t_ fine. She puts on a good show, but the Accuser knows her too well to mistake the stumbles: the rapidly-revised phrases when the Curator can’t recall the name of a colleague, the peculiar silences regarding topics on which she’d normally declaim at length. Each instance has made dread pool in the Accuser’s gut, perfect match to the fear she’s caught lurking in the Curator’s eyes. Whatever the Jailer has done to the Curator’s mind has lingered even outside the Maw, and the Curator knows it, however much she might deny.

And seeing the woman who remembers _everything_ , suddenly adrift in her own mind—

Well. The Accuser is very old, and has served Revendreth for a very long time; but there are precious few things in existence that have broken her heart quite so soundly, surely as a hammer taken to glass.

For a fleeting moment the urge to stay with the Curator almost overwhelms duty, and the Accuser’s hand drifts upward, readying to knock once again. But no; she forces it back down, and turns away, giving a harried sigh. There is too much left to be done, tonight, for the two of them to permit themselves the luxury of hiding in the dark.

She gathers her skirts, and strides off down the hall, headed for her next task.

It’s late enough in the night that it might more properly be called morning, but in the wake of their disastrous rout from Nathria Sinfall remains bustling with activity, possessed by a simmering chaos. Teams of dredgers haul crates of supplies through the corridors, and she passes clusters of Draven’s gargoyles scattered throughout the tower, busy making security assessments of each floor. Her own Avowed are gathered mostly in Sinfall proper, setting up the anima stores and munitions, cataloguing everything they’d managed to carry off in their scrambling retreat from the Halls. Stone fiends flit over it all, carrying smaller objects and missives and making trouble, eliciting the occasional fearsome snort from the gargons still chained on the sanctum floor.

A few pointed inquiries at passing dredgers inform her that the prince is holed up in a recently-cleared room just above and across from the sanctum, half-way up the immense inverted tower. (“In ’is study,” grunts Rendle.) The Accuser takes the stairs coiling up along the tower’s hollow interior with grim determination, everything she intends to say churning in her mind.

On reaching the appropriate level she locates the correct door by the simple expedient of it being the only one with an enormous gargoyle hunched over beside it, looking almost comically oversized for the corridor. Even with the high ceiling—Sinfall is a royal fortress, after all, not some hole in the ground—the stoneborn has to crouch just to fit, and the awkward curve of his wings against the ceiling hardly looks comfortable, even for a creature made of living stone.

She comes to a stop before him. “Good evening, General Draven. I assume Renathal is in?”

“Accuser.” Draven keeps his gravelly tones to a low rumble, carefully pitched to avoid booming in the enclosed space. He shifts as though he means to follow this up with a proper salute, but appears to think better of it when his wings scrape noisily against the wall. “The prince is here.” A thoughtful pause. “I believe he is . . . resting. He has had a series of meetings with Foreman Flatfinger, the Commander of the Princeguard, and the Mistress Mihaela, each lasting well over an hour. It would be best if he were not disturbed.”

“I’m afraid I must insist,” says the Accuser, and raps her knuckles smartly on the door. Draven doesn’t look happy, but makes no move to interfere.

A muffled “Come!” drifts from within, so she pushes through, leaving the glum gargoyle at his post. It’s plain that the general would prefer to be keeping an even closer eye on his recovered charge, stymied only by his own inability to fit through the door.

Inside proves to be a hastily-assembled war room, a long table pushed along one wall and a large map of Revendreth pinned up above it. Candles on the table cast the map aglow, but little else; the prince himself is only a dark shape behind a desk at the far end, outlined by the lighter darkness of a window into the tower interior.

The Accuser marches across the room. “Renathal, we need to talk.” A wave of her hand sends a droplet of anima to the unlit oil lamp on the wall, making it flare to life.

Her first sight of the prince is enough to give her pause. Renathal looks—in a word—ghastly, sitting half-dressed behind his desk. His liveried jacket is draped around his shoulders, and no wonder, given the bandages wrapped around his torso; she wouldn’t try her luck with sleeves, either, after being sliced to ribbons by Denathrius’s blade. The livid marks on his neck have darkened into an appalling black color, and her gaze fixes there, making her think, _Fool_.

The prince, for his part, sits wearily forward. “I am at your disposal, Accuser.” He scrubs his hands over his face, and when he takes them away she sees that the red glow of his eyes has dulled, sure sign of anima drain. “Tell me, how is the Curator? She did not seem . . . well, when we left the Maw. I’ve hardly had a chance to speak with her since.”

“She couldn’t remember the name of her top lieutenant.” Blunt. “Or the directions to her chambers, ten minutes after your attendant gave them.”

Renathal’s breath leaves him in a gusting sigh. “I had feared it might be something like that.” His right hand closes into a fist atop the table. “Damn the Jailer. Damn _Denathrius!_ Casting me into the Maw is one thing, but to cede a firstborn to the torments of Torghast—to hand over the greatest mind in Revendreth, to be picked apart by that creature . . .” He looks away, scowling. “I suppose we must hope that the effect will lessen over time, now that she is free of his grasp.”

The Accuser suffers a red-tinged urge of wanting to strike him for saying something so imbecilically optimistic, but she didn’t come here for that. Instead she sets her teeth, places her hands on the edge of his desk, and gets to the point. “We need to talk about your plans for taking on Denathrius, and how they involve the Curator.”

To the prince’s credit, he does not say, _Now?_ nor express any other such incredulity. He merely leans back, his eyes narrowed. “You know what I intend with the medallions.”

“I have some idea, yes. Whatever makes you think that using them will work any better this time?”

“The Maw Walker, for one.”

“You place too much faith in a mortal. Even an extraordinary one.”

“Oh, but they _are_ extraordinary. With the Maw Walker on our side I believe we have leveled the playing field a great deal.” For a moment Renathal’s eyes are alight with a dangerous humor, but he quickly grows serious again. “Beyond that—I mean to learn from our mistakes. I have no intention of trying to control Denathrius and his loyalists, should my medallion be recovered. We will gather them all, and break the network of control he exerts on the fabric of Revendreth itself.”

“Which will require,” the Accuser says, without inflection, “the Curator’s medallion.”

“Naturally.”

She pushes back off the table, straightening to her full height. “You will not put her in harm’s way again. Not on my watch.”

He considers her, steadily. “You are angry with me.”

“I am furious,” the Accuser snaps, “with both of you. How could the Dark Prince of Revendreth and the greatest archivist in reality be so _stupid?”_ Her hands close into fists at her sides. “How could you not have guessed? To think that you could use tools of Denathrius’s own making against him—to think you could bend him to your will, with something he made to impose _his_ —”

“The Curator believed that our bond to the medallions was stronger than his own.” There’s no ire in the prince’s reply, no defensiveness. “We had held them since the beginning—were created alongside them, to wield the artifacts that he had forged. They were _ours_.” A rattling sigh. “Or so we thought, until it all came crumbling down around us.”

“It was a _stupid_ plan,” says the Accuser tersely, and turns sharply from him, arms crossed close against her torso. Her throat feels tight. “A trifling attempt at a rebellion. The flubbed attempt of a foolish prince, who refused to see the truth until it was right under his nose.” She paces away down the room, heels clicking on the stone.

“I don’t deny that.” Renathal rises behind her. “Accuser.”

“Renathal,” she says, because if she says anything more her voice might break, and she is too old, too _proud,_ to let him see her so. The candles on the long table waver, and she gathers herself, forcing down her grief—how _wrong_ , to grieve for the losses of someone who yet lives!—and holding fixedly to her anger.

She hears him approach, and whirls again, meaning to tell him everything else he has done wrong—how it had hurt all those left behind, to know that their last best hope had been dragged into the Ember Ward; how they’d needed him, fortressed in the Halls of Atonement with only herself to ward them—but before she can get out a word he captures her hands in his own, and says, “I am so deeply sorry for what happened to the Curator. She was cast into the Maw because of me, and I wish with all my heart that I could have spared her from the Jailer’s wrath. I take full responsibility.”

The words are genuine; the prince, the Accuser knows, always is. Faced with his uncomplicated sincerity her fire sputters, and she sags, fatigue rolling inexorably in. It should not be possible to be so _tired_ , she thinks, here in the realms eternal; to be a Harvester of the venthyr, a courtier of Revendreth, and still find herself so fallible, so—fragile.

“But you do her a disservice,” Renathal goes on, “to take her own convictions out of the equation. She was—she _is_ —committed to our cause, just as I am, and yourself. We knew there would be risks, when we took up arms against our Sire.”

The Accuser’s head snaps back. “If you dare say to me that she chose this—chose to have her mind shattered, her memories fragmented—”

“Certainly not. But she did not follow me blindy into the jaws of the beast. If you care for her”— _as I know you do_ , he does not say, but she hears it, anyway—“you will do her the honor of recognizing the agency of her actions. It was my rebellion, but when I came to her with my fears she was no less eager to stop Denathrius than I.” Renathal’s gaze holds a knowing sorrow, meeting her glower. “An opinion she did not come by on her own, I’d wager.”

The Accuser has to look away, then, shame coiling in her heart. “No,” she acknowledges stiffly. “She did not.” She wishes, suddenly, fiercely, that the Curator were here, as she has time and time again since the fall of Darkwall Tower, right up until they’d come tumbling out of the Maw Walker’s rift. The knowledge that the object of that desire is now resting a short walk away within Sinfall feels like cold consolation. _I want you at my side, in all my waking hours. Even the darkest ones._ “But I wish . . . oh, _damn_ it all,” and her voice does crack, then, eschewing her permission, “I wish she hadn’t _listened_.” She jerks her hands away, her back gone ramrod straight.

“I know,” the prince says. And, as the Accuser covers her eyes with her hand, her shoulders starting to shake: “I know—"

And then, as the swell of her grief overcomes her; he steps forward, and draws her into a hug.

She appreciates, distantly, the courtesy wrapped into the gesture: at least, with her face hidden against his shoulder, he cannot see her cry. “Fool,” she says, damply, not knowing if she means it for his failure or his kindness, that great weakness in his immortal soul. “I wish she hadn’t gotten it into her head to follow you. I wish she hadn’t taken all the things I said so much to heart, and had left you to his dogs.” A selfish wish, ignoring everyone’s needs but her own, but—such is her truth, foul and unfettered.

Even Revendreth, it seems, can’t purge all of her sins.

But the prince says only, “I won’t begrudge you that,” his voice rumbling low. “But we _will_ try again. And if, when the time comes, she should choose to lend me her aid—I will not turn it down.”

At this the Accuser pulls away. Renathal lets her, standing respectfully back. “You will _not_ push her to reclaim her medallion while she is—unwell,” she directs, dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve. “She needs time to recuperate. I won’t have you dragging her over the details of what she’s been through before she’s even had a chance to recover.”

“Of course not,” Renathal says, in a tone that suggests that the implied assessment of his character wounds him. “But—you know as well as I what she is like, when she has set her mind upon something. Once she decides that she is ready . . .” He spreads his hands, as though to say, _What would you have me do?_

The Accuser gives him an acid look, encompassing everything she thinks about _that_ , and taking him in. His own wounds, she is certain, are more serious than he lets on; there’s a stiffness to his posture, a caution to his gestures, that suggests he walks a fine line between tolerable and intolerable pain. No doubt he’ll throw himself into winning back Revendreth well before he’s ready, too, his own safety be damned. Little wonder that he would accept the same exact behavior from his fellow firstborn, with just as little thought.

For all their differences, she thinks sourly, he and the Curator really are _entirely_ too much alike.

Aloud, she sighs, “No, of course. You couldn’t stop her if you tried.” She clears her throat, and smooths her hands down her skirts, trying to reassert her usual air of steadfast composure. “Both of you will do what you think is right. You always do.” _No matter how it hurts the rest of us, to watch you break yourselves upon the rocks of your convictions._

“Funny. The Stonewright said the same thing, when we came to her to entreaty her to join us.”

“The Stonewright,” the Accuser sniffs primly, “is the only one of Denathrius’s children that he deigned to gift with a _brain_.”

Which startles a laugh from the prince, and leaves him wincing, hand going abortively to his chest. (The Accuser feels a faint spike of vindication.) “Perhaps so,” he says, a little strained. “I certainly wish for her at my side, if only for her exceptional ability to smack me upside the head _before_ I’ve made the bad choice, as opposed to after.”

“Oh, I can supply that,” the Accuser assures him, dangerously, and then looks to the door. “I had—best get back out there. Someone needs to make sure the Avowed are settling in properly, taking their orders from the right people . . .”

“My dear Accuser.” The prince leans back against his desk; were it not for his injuries she imagines he would cross his arms in disapproval. “For someone who urges others not to push themselves, you spare frightfully little care for yourself. I am confident the Avowed can survive a few hours without your invaluable guidance.” He overrides her feeble sound of protest. “Go to the Curator. We have things well in hand.” And, in soft addition, “It would be a cruel thing, to leave her to face her first night back from the Maw alone.”

Which tightens the Accuser’s throat all over again, and quashes any further protest more finally than any order. She takes shelter in formality, bowing her head. “Very well, my prince.”

“Away with you,” says Renathal, and so she gathers up her skirts together with the last shreds of her dignity, and heads at last for the hall.

She almost runs bodily into the Mad Duke on her way out, pulling open the door as Theotar negotiates grasping the handle while balancing a full tea set on a tray. When they’ve completed their startled tangle of reflexes—somehow, none of the tea winds up on the floor—he exclaims, “My goodness, Accuser!” with a typical giddy laugh. (None of them, it seems, have escaped this rebellion unscathed.) “In a tearing hurry, I see.”

“Indeed. Good evening, Theotar.” She steps aside, holding the door.

“Oh, thank you.” He sidles carefully through, tray held properly now with both hands, and she leaves the door to swing shut behind him, cutting off Renathal’s warm growl of greeting.

Out in the hall Draven still looms, steadfast in his discomfited vigil. The Accuser nearly leaves him to it, on the notion that self-flagellation isn’t her professional area of expertise, but takes pity when he makes another hopeless attempt to resettle.

“General,” she says, pausing beside him. “I believe the prince will be occupied with Duke Theotar for some time.” Indeed, thinking on the prince’s final remark, she expects they’ll find a means of making that tea last the rest of the night. “You need not linger.”

“I must remain.” Draven is impassive. “It is my duty to protect the prince.”

“We are in the heart of an impenetrable fortress, surrounded by your own hand-picked forces, with one of the prince’s most loyal and powerful magi just on the other side of that door. I cannot imagine that he will require your services any sooner than, oh, well after dawn.”

“The stoneborn do not deal in probabilities. We _serve._ ”

“I don’t for a moment believe that Renathal has commanded you to serve him in this particular fashion.”

Draven’s expression suggests that this conversation is starting to strain his collection of evasive Stone Legion proverbs, but eventually he comes up with, “He does not have to. I live to protect Revendreth, and with Revendreth sundered, that means protecting him.”

“Which is a fine way of putting ‘I’m worried about my charge, and feel guilty that I couldn’t keep Denathrius from casting him into the Maw.’” The Accuser does not, quite, throw her hands up in exasperation. “ _Draven_. We both know you are too valuable to be wasted on guarding the prince within Sinfall. If you _must_ serve at all hours, then for pity’s sake, do it somewhere we actually have need of your talents, instead of _here._ ”

There is a long silence, enough that the Accuser decides to give the cause up as lost—but then Draven says, “Perhaps I will . . . patrol the battlements. To ensure our borders are secure.”

Which is probably the best she can expect from him, all things considered. _Well, to each their own. Whatever gets us through the night._ “Very good, general. I’m sure Prince Renathal will approve.”

And with that she turns, and makes her final escape down the stairs, unwilling to delay any longer the reunion with her own remedy for the dark hours. The sounds of a very large gargoyle extricating himself from the hallway follow her down, incremental.

She takes the steps floating, the better to maintain her speed; it would not do, at her age and station, to be caught taking them two at a time.


End file.
